John Constable: Masterpieces in Colour

John Constable was English painter, ranked with Turner as one of the greatest British landscape artists. Although he showed an early talent for art and began painting his native Suffolk scenery before he left school, his great originality matured slowly.

Constable rejected the formal or "picturesque" rendering of nature found in the works of artists like Gainsborough. Instead, he tried to capture informally the effects of changing light and the patterns of clouds moving across the country sky. He loved the countryside, and his best work was of outdoor scenes in his native Suffolk and his London home in Hampstead.

He worked in the open air, though he returned to his studio to finish his paintings. Often completing primary sketches prior to starting a large canvas, Constable would draw on the inspiration nature gave him and tries to capture a moment in time, testing his composition first in sketches.

In England Constable had no real successor and the many imitators (who included his son Lionel) turned rather to the formal compositions than to the more direct sketches. In France, however, he was a major influence on Romantic painters such as Delacroix, on the members of the Barbizon School, and ultimately on the Impressionists.